- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
And now you have a chance not only to meet your (mead) maker but learn how to make a small batch of mead.
The UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center wants you to know that.
Amina Harris, executive director of the Honey and Pollination Center, has just announced plans for another "Beginner's Introduction to Mead Making," a short course set Nov. 13-14 in the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, UC Davis campus. Registration is now underway for the course, limited to 75.
From the wine came the grape, from the mead came the honey...
Mead is a beverage rich in history. It dates back 8000 years, Harris says. "Brewers and winemakers know that in the world of alcoholic beverages the buzz is all about mead."
In small groups, participants will work in the university's LEED Platinum Winery to make small batches of mead under the supervision of Chik Brenneman, the winemaker for UC Davis; Mike Faul, proprietor of Rabbit's Foot Meadery in Sunnyvale, Calif.; Ken Schramm, author of The Compleat Meadmaker and owner of Schramm's Mead in Ferndale, Mich.; and Michael Fairbrother, Owner of Moonlight Meadery, based in Londonderry, N. Hamp.
Harris says the center has been working with mead makers from across the United States to offer annual courses that cater to both home crafters and commercial enterprises.
“This course--aimed at the beginner who wants to know more--is the first in a series being developed by faculty in the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology and the Honey and Pollination Center,” Harris said. "We plan to offer an intermediate level course in spring of 2016, targeted to those who have recently started meaderies and those who have been making mead for several years.” The intermediate course will offer detailed information about fermentation and yeast selection, chemistry, ingredient selection, sensory expectations and working with the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.
A the Nov. 13-14 short course, a program highlight will be the opportunity for participants "to meet and work with prominent mead makers and teachers in an intimate environment," Harris says. Additionally, attendees are encouraged to bring their home brews to share, taste and evaluate in an informal gathering at a local hotel on Friday evening. “It's a great way to get to know what's out there in the mead world. Two years ago, everyone was trying ‘Ghost Pepper Meads' to see who had the greatest punch.”
The center has been working with individual mead makers, the American Mead Makers Association, the Mazer Cup and GotMead.com for more than two years to meet the needs of both the craft and professional mead makers. To further this effort, the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology and the Honey and Pollination Center have submitted a grant to the National Honey Board to investigate paths to a successful mead fermentation.
“With the growing interest in mead today, almost no useable research has been brought forward,” Harris says. “We hope to change that."
Information about registration: http://honey.ucdavis.edu/mead
Fees: $500 through Aug. 31 and $575 thereafter
Want more information about the short course? Contact Amina Harris at aharris@ucdavis.edu
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Just call them "snuggle bugs."
Or "snuggle bees."
After spending the day chasing the girls and defending their patch of Mexican sunflowers or Tithonia, a cluster of Melissodes robustior males settled down for the night.
Their bed last night: a Tithonia leaf curl. Before that, some lavender stems. Before that, a Tithonia blossom.
The occasion: Boys' Night Out. While the girls sleep in their underground nests, the boys find a comfortable and presumably safe place to get some shut eye.
Last night a single male chose the bed, and soon half a dozen others joined him. They are territorial during the day, but at night, it's all fuzzy wuzzy, peace 'n harmony, and "brotherly love."
Meanwhile, a European paper wasp flew by, its legs dangling, and a nearby garden spider crawled to the edge of its web and checked out the sleeping boys.
Melissodes is just one of the bees mentioned in the book, California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (Heyday). It's the work of the University of California-based team of Gordon Frankie, Robbin Thorp, Rollin Coville and Barbara Eritter, all of whom are linked to UC Berkeley, past or present (Thorp, a distinguished emeritus professor at UC Davis, received his doctorate at UC Berkeley.)
The authors point out that there are 130 Melissodes species in the New World, "predominantly in North America, which is home to approximately 100 of these."
Fifty Melissodes species have been found in California alone. "Only (the) species, M. robustior, M. tepida timberlakei and M. lupina are widespread and common," they write.
Our Vacaville bee garden annually draws dozens of Melissodes robustior to the Tithonia.
Widespread and common? Yes, at least in our little bee garden.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Hurray for the red, white and blue!
One more day until we celebrate the birth of our country, Independence Day, and the patriotic colors will be out in force.
Insects, also, can be red, white and blue.
Take the red flameskimmer dragonfly (Libellula saturata). The male is firecracker red, as bright as the stripes on our American flag.
Take the Acmon Blue (Plebejus acmon) butterfly. It's as blue as the starry background on our flag.
Take the white cabbage butterfly (Pieris rapae). it's a white as the stars on our flag. Okay, it's a pest, but its colors are appropriate on July 4.
Just think, when the members of the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, there were all those red, white and blue insects flying around.
We mark the holiday with fireworks, family reunions, parades, barbecues, carnivals, picnics, concerts, baseball games, and the like, but if we look closely, the insects are there, too!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The excitement began when Martin Guerena, an integrated pest management (IPM) specialist with the City of Davis, encountered a native bee nesting site Wednesday in front of the U.S. Bank, corner of 3rd and F streets, Davis.
Some passersby figured they were wasps and were asking bank officials to exterminate them.
Guerena contacted UC Davis officials and learned that these particular bees were sunflower bees, Svastra obliqua expurgata, nesting underground. Native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, distinguished emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis, identified them, and Katharina Ullmann, who last year received her doctorate in entomology from UC Davis and is now a crop pollination specialist with the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, circled the site with yellow caution tape today and posted an educational sign.
"This is a sunflower bee nesting site," Ullmann wrote. "These gentle bees are native and ground nesting. The females of this species are solitary bees, but like to nest near each other and often use the same nest entrance. Their nesting tunnels lead to individual chambers below the ground. Each chamber is filled with pollen, a single egg, and then closed off. These eggs will hatch, develop underground, and emerge next summer to build their nests. This sunflower bee is one of 1600 species of native bees found in California."
The sign included a "name tag" with the common name, scientific name, favorite food (pollen and nectar), favorite place to be (3rd St., Davis), favorite colors (yellow, red and orange) and favorite saying (YOLO, You Only Live Once).
Ullmann added: "Three things you can do to help this bee: (1) protect nests, (2) plant flowers and (3) use fewer insecticides.
Sunflower bees are also nesting nearby--near the Pizza Guys restaurant and the 7-Eleven parking lot. UC Davis entomology graduate student Margaret "Rei"Scampavia identified the bees as from the same genus, and also noted the presence of cuckoo bees.
Thorp says the female cuckoo bee, Triepeolus concavus, lays her eggs in the ground nests of other bees, including the sunflower bee, Svastra. Cuckoo bees are kleptoparasites, meaning that they steal the food stores provisioned by the host bee. Cuckoos lack pollen-collecting structures (scopa). So when the cuckoo bee eggs hatch, the larva will consume the pollen ball collected by the hosts, and kill and eat the host larvae. Like human kleptomanias, they've found a way to make it in this world at the expense of others.
Ullmann, who studied with pollination ecologist Neal Williams of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, wants to protect the sunflower bees and figures an informational sign will help.
Frankly, it's quite appropriate that the sunflowers bees are nesting near the bank. They're making their own deposits--pollen!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Beekeepers don't like their "girls" foraging in California buckeye (Aesculus californica)
It's poisonous to bees.
"The signs of poisoning can be as severe as dying adult bees and brood, only dying brood, brood that barely makes it and emerges misshapen, brood that emerges undersized, and probably bees that don't live normal lifespans, but we haven't proven that," says Extension apiculturist emeritus Eric Mussen, who, although retired, continues to maintain an office in Briggs Hall, UC Davis campus.
Is it the pollen or the nectar that's poisonous?
Possibly it's only the pollen that contains the toxin, "but some pollen always ends up in the nectar and honey," Mussen says.
"It is all a matter of dilution. When many different plants are producing pollen and nectar at the same time as the buckeye, sometimes the bees escape undamaged. However, beekeepers have long known that on dry years the buckeye is the best producer of both pollen and nectar, so the bees go for it.
What to do? Bees can fly some five miles from the hive to collect nectar and pollen. It isn't always possible for beekeepers to move their bees out of areas with buckeye, "especially on dry years--we've had more than enough of those," Mussen says.
"Otherwise, they feed the bees with substitute, pollen traps might help a bit but most beekeepers don't have them, they feed sugar syrup, and if they can do it, they take the buckeye-pollen combs out. If the combs are left in, the buckeye pollen gets stored. It gets covered up when fresh pollens start coming in, and things seem to straighten out."
"Then long comes another pollen and nectar dearth and the bees dig into the stores. It is not uncommon to have the bees 'buckeyed' twice in one year," Mussen says.
"California buckeye was discovered in the early 1800s in California and described by Edouard Spach in 1834 (Little 1979, Hickman 1993)," writes Frank Callahan of Central Point, Ore. writing for the Native Plant Society of Oregon.
"All parts of California buckeye are toxic to humans and livestock," Callahan points out. "Poisoning is from glycosidal compounds that are present in all plant parts. Humans have been poisoned by honey made from the flowers (USDA Forest Service 1974). The flowers are toxic to European honeybees (Apis mellifera); however, native pollinators relish the collection of nectar without side effects. The adult pale swallowtail butterfly (Papilio eurymedon) appears particularly fond of this plant."
Yes, we've seen butterflies nectaring on the buckeye. Never seen a buckeye butterfly (Junonia coenia) nectaring on a California buckeye, though!